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Murder in the Palace of the Moors
A reimagining of the War of SandWing succession: What would happen to the MudWings if Moorhen were to die? Chapter 1 It was once rumored within the tribe that a dragon could take one look at Moorhen and be sated for life on the wealth of pleasures which his eye had seen. She was a commoner, elevated by chance in the grand breeding experiment of MudWing society; her decisions as ruler had come from personal mistakes and hard-learned wisdoms which other rulers consulted literary instruction to avoid. In every armored underscale on Moorhen's powerfully built body, one could bask in the piercing luster of sun-rainbows and gold. They said that the illusions shining in the metallic warmth of her scales were the purity of the self-made dragon; that the entrancing colors were, made manifest in her, the struggle to become a ruler worthy of their people. I have no doubt that identical legends will be born anew for generations. After all, one cannot tell a blind dragon to see. ---- The morning was cold. It hadn't yet rained, but precipitation was due; the muted sky, burdened by thick walls of humidity, stooped over the horizon like a hobbling creature. Several siblings were shuffling far below the window and tending to the ripening gourds. They buried their heads among the abundant vegetation of the garden. A comet arced through the air, thrown like an enormous unholy grin. There was an awkward heave, an uncoordinated cry, and the sound of four hundred pounds of weight slamming into the marble floor. The gardeners scattered, startled out of their wits. Moorhen's silhouette crumpled and bent over onto its foretalons, scanning the quarters with outrage and pain. The spear lodged in her body dripped with sticky rivulets of gore as she forced out panicked breaths-- it felt like a SeaWing's tail was constricting the air from her lungs. She could sense the point slipping around inside her flesh, its shaft wedged through the gap in her spinal vertebrae. The agony forced her to sit still. Sharp claws clicked on the tile behind her. "It's a good spear. Costs a fortune. You're lucky to have it through your gut." Moorhen took a slow step forward, clutching her wound with messy talons. An overflow of warm blood pooled out from her stomach in a metallic spray as she leaned forward and gasped, desperately wrenching herself to pull the foreign object free from her body with trembling talons. The weight of the lodged spear shifted as she struggled, its deadly tip inching ever closer to her vitals. The intruding dragon’s molars gnashed in a cruel snarl before they advanced on her. ---- The IceWings are taking advantage of optimal climate and terrain. It will be harder to resist their forces on the eastern offensive march-- I fear we are in great danger. Prince Wigeon read the files, half-awake and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The paper had creased from the moisture in the air, and he could barely read the hastily written list of residential concerns sitting to his left. His sibs were out dealing with civil conflicts at the courts, leaving him alone with Moorhen. He wasn't about to singlehandedly determine whether his tribemates lived or died in battle. The caramel dragon rounded the corner of the queen's room. "Moorhen, I need you to take a look at this ambush da--" The scene he stumbled upon shocked the sleep out of his russet eyes. Moorhen was weakly clutching the floor, barely gripping onto the slippery surface as her thick talons slid backwards with blood and sweat. A dragonlike creature swathed in shadows paced back and forth beside her. Though its powerful figure towered over her, it moved with surprising agility and skill. Moorhen‘s weakening talons shakily rose, snatched the cowled dragon in the thinly protected skin on its ears, and proceeded to rip downwards through the other side of the cloak. The result was a furious roar as the faceless attacker flung her onto the marble, sending her clattering. It stalked forward, emitting a sadistic rhythm of deep chaffing noises like it was charging fire. Moorhen, sliding with a thunk into the wall, crouched on her front legs and let out a thin whuff of breath. The dragon didn't hesitate. In the short window that the queen was recovering, it seized her by the throat and wrestled her beneath it. She spasmed to gain footing again but slid over her own blood, pulling her feet out from under her and forcing her head under the weight of the attacker's claws. As they struggled on the ground, Wigeon circled the battle, assessing the stranger clamping its talons around Moorhen’s neck . Her mouth moved as though she were about to call something to Wigeon. She was bloodless, running out of air, shivering from the cold seeping into her open wounds. I have to intervene, Wigeon told himself decisively, mustering up his courage. He rushed into the dragon from the side, knocking it off of his sister with a miscalculated stumble. It quickly righted itself and whirled on a simple turn of its claws to face the prince. Smoke billowed from the void of its face. The scrutiny of its hidden eyes burned through the other side of his body into the wall, like the dragon was seeking a route whereby to kill him. The outline of the dragon leapt from the paralyzed Queen, accelerating to a full speed dash. Wigeon feinted to the side and charged. There was a flurry of dodging, ramming, and snapping at empty air. Wigeon landed a strike across the bloodstained cloth of the opponent's disguise, snagging it and tearing a long line in the linens. The silhouette, in return, scored an equally long line in Wigeon's face. He bellowed in pain, wiped away the blood, and rushed his enemy again. The assassin allowed his claws to place the blow. "I'll give you credit for ambition," it grunted. A fount of slick red erupted from the darkness where its panting chest should be. "It's commendable, if not amusing." With that remark, Moorhen's killer slammed down hard on the prince's chest, and sent him tumbling across the remainder of the room. Prince Wigeon collided with the wall with a thunk, his leg crushed under the weight of his body. "Frog-mouthed fish egg," Wigeon coughed. At this remark the assassin spat venomously, digging a claw into Wigeon's gut. All of the brutal honey in its voice was gone within two blinks, replaced by a fiercer rage. "I am ten times more important than you. Stop wasting your precious words." Wigeon had barely processed what he heard when a huge tail crushed the air from his insides. He squeaked; the dragon's heavy talons crushed down on his shoulders and planted him into the ground. His heart was physically abusing his insides, pounding and punching like it was still fighting. Across the room, the queen's shivering had driven her onto her knees. She was feverish. Blood and spit mingled on the floor, her face splashing against the pool of fluid again with every futile attempt to pick herself up. The teeth hovering inches from Wigeon's face contorted into a curt, wolfish smirk as Moorhen cringed like lightning had shot through her head. The muscles in her jaws twisted into pale tissue and froze. Empty eyes stared up at the ceiling, eerily still. She was a disgraced statue, gazing into the void in utter stupor, like she was surprised that she had died. I could have saved her, Wigeon thought with a twinge of guilt. Then something kicked down hard on his forehead, and his pity was snuffed out with the crack of his vertebrae shearing through each other. Chapter 2 Sienna combed through Wigeon's envelopes, fretting over the death counts from their recent clash with IceWings in the west. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep reading without weeping over the officers' reports. With every MudWing he imagined the bloodless faces of his fallen siblings, stripped of their animated spark and rotting. It had always been a grim business receiving messages from the generals, but the act of sorting would calm Prince Sienna under normal circumstances. Now the disorganization of the folders only reminded him that they had sloppily bled into each other moments before Wigeon's life was terminated. He found it highly inappropriate that he and his siblings should be the ones continuing the work of his brother while the rest of the tribe lamented over Wigeon's assassination; it was against the principle of respecting one's siblings. Whatever the other tribes said about MudWings being warlike, it wasn't true. War demanded things of his people-- if they wanted to survive-- that defied their culture. The deaths of his two closest sibs had rattled his world irreparably, to the point that for several days he could neither speak nor perceive when he was being spoken to. It had stunned him into grief, and grief had addled his brain. To Sienna's understanding, Wigeon was perusing letters with statistics on recent battles before he died. He knew this because all of the mail naturally ended up in Wigeon's chamber, one way or another, and because military data is precisely what was lying in an unshuffled mess on the floor of the room where he was killed. Most of them reported military failures on the tribe's part; as Sienna read them, he could feel the pervasive impatience of their patron SandWing princess seething through every word. Her tolerance for error would not last much longer, and it was clear that she preferred the SeaWings' naval brilliance over the MudWings' code of honor. He curled his lip, knowing they needed her protection far more than she needed them. The sentiment seemed to have infected much of the tribe as well. The kingdom had already rushed to defend itself in whatever way available; members of the public were quickly gathering in mobs to prepare the last remaining female sibling of Moorhen-- Rhône-- for the throne. But Sienna knew that Rhône was no bigwings, and had little experience telling anyone what to do. He stared absently at one of the chess pieces on his drafting table and moved it across the patiently charted map of Pyrrhia. He figured that the tribe's forces were not in the proper position to lead an offensive attack, but too poorly defended to remain where they were; they needed a way to control IceWing activity. As he inspected a few mountain passes on his map of Pyrrhia-- hoping he might be able to contest the IceWings by cutting off their direct supply line-- his eyes fell to an unopened envelope stamped with an ornate yellow wax seal. The color rushed from his face. Blister's insignia. He drew the parchment towards him and unfurled the scroll curled up inside. The handwriting was sharp and evenly spaced, as though it had been carefully planned to march across the paper in a neat line. This was not the cramped writing of one of Blister's servants, but of the princess herself. To the office of Queen Moorhen, it began. I regret to remind you that because you have not complied with my requests to cooperate with the SeaWing royal court, our treaty of union will be forced to expire within five days. I would much prefer knowing your military expertise is on my side over losing the generously supplied units who have fought for my cause. If you are somehow able to negotiate a compromise with the SeaWings over your contested economic interests in the delta region, I will gladly renew the treaty. If you cannot broker a reasonable agreement with Queen Coral in five days' time, you will be dismissed from my war cabinet. Panic gripped Prince Sienna. Queen Coral was an impossible dragon to negotiate with. She settled for nothing less than what she wanted and cared little for whether the MudWings got the short end of the stick. His tribe was robbed of its monarch, and was about to lose its alliance with Blister if it didn't surrender the delta region. He needed no letters to comprehend that their chances of recovery were bleak. Three moons, he thought nervously.'' We're going to become the first tribe to go extinct in the war. '' As he worried himself with options, Prince Chenier entered from the other room. His helpless earthy expression pleaded with Sienna, the hope in them so ruthlessly crushed that the busy dragon had to avert his gaze. His line of sight unhelpfully fell to the bloodied artifact in his brother's grip, which did nothing to ease the pain of interacting. "Yes?" "I've identified the spear," Chenier murmured, his voice shivering. "It's not good." "What do you mean?" demanded Sienna hotly, glaring at his sibling. "Is it a badly made spear? Would you like to ask Moorhen?" "Sienna," Chenier quavered, expending a great deal of effort to raise his voice, "can you see the spirals rounded into this? It's a narwhal horn spear. This was crafted by a SeaWing." He tapped it as though afraid to run his finger along the ridges. Sienna glanced from the letter, then to the narwhal spear. Resentment boiled in his throat. Chapter 3 Princess Moray’s scales crawled as she paced irascibly about the chamber, trying not to entertain her feelings of doubt. She couldn’t help but wonder whether she had made her decision out of pride for her tribe or out of selfishness. A smallish dragon stood beside her in enduring patience, waiting for the restless SeaWing princess to calm down. Moray’s stripes had been flashing at an incoherent speed for the past hour. “Personally, I don’t trust how your tribe always seems to know when to make the right deals with the right dragons,” said the decidedly female compatriot, her dark eyes glittering. “You’re alive right now because you can help us pocket the Mud Kingdom. As a council member, I assume you understand why a kingdom would need a sizable military force at its disposal.” “I can completely understand why you would need more allies. That being said, I hate your allies.” “As a culture, they are completely disagreeable. The fact that they have the most resilient standing military in Pyrrhia convinced us to overlook our judgement of their character.” She squinted at Moray curiously. “Even if that does mean losing the support of the Sea Kingdom.” “We don’t care who we support,” Moray grumbled testily. “Aside from Coral, the rest of our council doesn’t give a whale’s carcass about who wins the SandWing throne. When this war is over and done, the SeaWings will expect something to gain from it, and we don’t want a petty alliance as a consolation prize.” “I had a suspicion,” said the conspirator drily. “So, then... what DO you want from me?”Category:Fanfictions Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete) Category:Content (FourFlames) Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)